Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
on Monday September 19, 2005 @09:36PM
from the internet-nostalgia dept.

JeffLedger writes "A group of retro-geeks have rebuilt the old Quantum Link system to allow both emulated and real c64's to sign in over the Internet using the original software. Before it was called America Online, Quantum Link provided a pre-Internet online service to Commodore users."

Whoever modded this "Offtopic" is a "moran" who needs to "get a brain". Errors in spelling or grammar in the summary or title are always "Ontopic" on Slashdot. So are personal attacks on the mods, who, I'm told by a "totally reliable" source, are "a bunch of homos".

Golly I should research this before I post, but I seem to remember that Q-Link got screwed by the money-grubbers at Commodore (a bit before all the rest of us) and this one reason AOL never offered an Amiga client.

The internet, in the form we know it didn't really eventuate until 1984 or so.

Arpanet is much older, but Arpanet really was quite different (owing to the fact that it wasn't TCP/IP). It's like Homo neanderthalensis, recognisable as a precursor to ourselves, but a completely different beast.

The internet of course didn't really come into being in the popular sense until 1990 or so.

It's like Homo neanderthalensis, recognisable as a precursor to ourselves, but a completely different beast.

Sorry to be nitpicky, but you chose completely the wrong example to use as an analogy.

Homo Neanderthalensis . . . yeah, they used to be seen as a precursor to "humankind", but that was due in a large part to the fact that scientists, unfortunately for the accuracy of results and theories, are human . . . archaeologists and paleontologists inherited from their cultures a huge burden of preconceptions about what "human" is, and combined with some of the initial findings of the Neanderthals being actually terribly diseased and atypical examples, along with the misclassification of any artifacts left behind as instead being left behind by Homo Sapiens . . . well, it's only recently (relatively speaking) that the scientific community has started to wake up to the rather non-linear relationship of "us to them".

Now, naturally, conclusions are far from certain. At some point the Neanderthals diverged; but it's hard to argue that then the human race continued on and left them behind, the actual demise of the Neanderthals is a trickier business. Arguments range from interbreeding (we're all Neanderthals!) to ourbreeding (as in, humans moved into Neanderthal territory as climates changed, and like rabbits we just outpopulated them, pushing them away), to war (stone age style), combinations of all the above, and more. What is at least certain, though, is that the Neanderthals weren't, uhh, of the nature that you describe them as being.

Not sure why I spent that brief period of time dredging all that up, I'll probably either be ignored or modded (probably rightfully, though unfortunately it's a policy that squashes interesting tangential discussion) off-topic. Oh well!

Part of it is that it's debatable whether they ever entirely diverged; the two "species" might have interbred and reintegrated, thus breaking the definition of species. In that case, certainly not "a completely different beast". And of course there's dozens of different takes on the theories, each of them different but nearly all disagreeing with the "recognisable as a precursor to ourselves, but a completely different beast" statement. The specifics of why that statement is wrong, and/or which specific

The way you hook up an actual C64 to this is via a null modem connection to a PC that acts as an Internet gateway. There software you install on the PC side to make the connection. Even when you are connecting through an emulator you need to configure a modem device and "dial".This wouldn't work with a C64 Ethernet card as far as I can tell.

My 128D became a fulltime terminal box running desterm, never liked paying for Qlink and only used it when they gave free minutes. I liked dialing local BBS's instead. Desterm for the 128 was a nice little terminal program.

I never met that guy, but I do have a strong memory of being held captive aboard an alien ship with funky mirrors. When I returned, I told everybody a bout my ordeal. Now I'm living out my days in this damn hospital. Oh well, at least my sister won the swim meet.

Back in the day, we complained bitterly about how inadequate Quantum Link was compared to the real Internet. Now, 10 years after the service was discontinued, we are willing to setup emulators to allow us to play with a reconstruction. Lol.

You really should take a picture of that stuff and send it to me. We are always looking for old Q-link shwag. I even scanned in some old Q-Link BRC's and we had them printed out at this months SWRAP Expo.

You can compliment your original Q-Link mug and support the Q-Link Reloaded project by ordering a new mug [cafepress.com]. Then you can fill up your mugs with coffee and stay up all night soaking in the retro goodness.

I certainly hope so. I still have my SuperQ disk around here. I know what I'm doing this weekend:)

I also wonder how many members of the old Q'mmunity will try this out. I'd love to get back in touch with some of my old Q-Link friends.

I'll also note that I submitted a story last year on the 10-year anniversary of the Q-Link shutdown. It was sadly rejected. I'll give a basic rehash here...

After several months of system degradation, overflows which allowed AOL and Q-Link members to converse, complete UNDERhauls of the Q-Link system to be per^H^H^Hconverted for use within AOL, and the incesant "Come to AOL" emails, Q-Link was unceremoniously shut down at the normal off time. Nobody from AOL showed up to say "Thank you for a spectacularly fun and eventful decade." Nothing. At the bottom of the screen:

THE SYSTEM HAS SHUT DOWN

This was the normal message you saw at shut down, but probably most fitting on this particular morning.

I first subscribed to QuantumLink in 1986 when I was 8 years old. Anyhoo, I was asked to join the "User Advisory Board." In exchange for 240 free "plus" minutes per month, I spent about 30 minutes in a People Connection room with several employees of QLink, one of whom had the screen name "SteveCase"

Club Caribe is not too tough to reverse engineer the protocol, but you also have to implement the entire Habitat/CC server component. I have some code to do that, but implementing the basic service has been the top priority.

Nothing of content to add. I just want to say that this is very, very righteous.

8-bits are still fun to use!

Wicked Friday night in the 8-bit era:

7-8pm Q-Link8-9pm Play Airborne Ranger9-10pm break for new Kids in the Hall episode10-11:50pm Q-Link11:50pm-12:00am Call local BBSs, make moves in Space Empire to initiate attack another system. Buddy/ally does same. (as do your slave accounts)12:01am-12:10am Use fresh Space Empire turns for the new day to complete sneak attack. Double fists of fury!12:10am-1:00am Play Test Drive1:00am-2:00am Play California Games2:01 turn on wardialer and go to bed

Any other Canadians use QuantumLink? As a young person without much of a concept of money and how usage fees can multiply, I was blown away by the first month's bill we received for QuantumLink. 20 hours of use -- after some bizarre internal long distance charges, access fees, and currency conversion -- worked out to about $200. Club Caribe was fun, but the bill (and my parents' reaction at the time) made it a service that I disconnected from quickly.

Like another poster above asked, has anyone been able to connect to the server and see if Club Caribe worked?

I remember man, I remember. That was a wonderful experience. It had tons to do and explore. Oddly enough, it was much like other MMOGs today. Lot's of clicking around to find small little 'gems'. As I recall, you could even take off your head and put on a new one. If Habitat/Club Caribe runs on this thing, I'll be there all weekend.

Wow, that's what I call a cool hack. C64s used to be the funnest things to play around with. Years ago I built a servo control circuit board for a friend to plug into the back slot of a C64, to control exhibits in a coin-operated art gallery (later known as The Church of Elvis, Portland Oregon). Writing the control software in Commodore Basic and seeing the whole thing work was one of the coolest things I ever did.

A: Right now, only the basic (Q-link 4.0) games work such as Hangman, Battleship, Chess, etc.. Since the hard part (the q-link & x.25 pad stuff) has been pretty much conquered, the rest of the lot should come with time. The only real exception to that rule is Club Caribe--it's not impossible that it can be supported, but it certainly is the hardest thing to implement and also last on the developers' list. Rabbit Jack Casino is on the top of that list I think. One of the developers has gotten Puzzler to work (part of super Q) but only independently since the server itself doesn't support Super-Q....but progress is being made.

Q: How many users does the system support? (Since the old service ran on a Stratus 200 with 8 12Mhz68010's)

A: Well, we'll see after the slashdoting I suppose. I should be able to handle much more on modern hardware. Keep in mind when you automatically join the People Connection you are dumped into the lobby--the Lobby supports (as all rooms in the PC) up to 23 users, and when the limit is reached it creates a new lobby and dumps new users into it.

Q: What works so far? What works and what will cause the client to freeze?

A: Pretty much all of the People connection (that includes email, IM's, panels, and games that don't require super-q or cc), The Commodore Connection (only one download is available right now for testing), Customer Service (message boards are at about 90%). Most of the other areas 'work' but haven't been populated with content yet. Any old timer Q-linkers that may have saved stuff from these areas are encouraged to help us out. Oh yah, the "Let Q-Link pick my partners" when starting a game option will most certainly freeze your client.

Q: Does it work under Linux?

A: Sure does, although it's a bit more involved that doing it through Windows with our specially patched Winvice 1.6, or even just running TCPserve and connecting with a real C64/C128 via a RS232 adapter and null-modem cable. If your using Mac OS X (Like I am) your kind of screwed though.. unless you have the genius to compile the latest Vice with RS232 emulation for Mac OS X. Otherwise, the site has all of the tools you'll need, assuming it doesn't get Slashdoted.

Q: Got a mirror? (In case the main site get's slashdotted)

A: Sort of. http://www.circleofthunder.com/downloads.html [circleofthunder.com]I have the Q-link v4 disk up there along with some extra goodies (games discs 1/2 + CC & Super-Q). I don't have the patched version of WinVICE 1.6 though.

Those are the biggies I can think of off the top of my head. If you have anymore questions (not spelling or grammar related), post em here.

As you can see here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=22404&cid=2408 020 [slashdot.org], I was one of the designers/programmers of PlayNet (which was later tweaked and named QLink). They're _still_ (last I checked) using a variant of my error-correcting protocol designed specifically for X.25 PADs, running over TCP (which is kinda dumb). Now, they may not use it for much anymore; probably mostly just login I'd guess.

I promised these guys I'd dig through my old C64 development disks to see if there's any source; g

Is P3 your baby? Yep, as far as I can recall P3 is still supported for some of those older clients. I remember in the late 90s there was work to talk to some clients via L2TP instead, and of course servers never send the whole input packet around to each other anymore; it gets abstracted much closer to the edge. But at some level, I suspect vestiges of P3 are still in daily use; the two-character routing token the most obvious one.I am pretty sure I have a file or two around here that uses 0x7F as a line

I don't care what wikipedia says, in my book the Internet came about somewhere in 1982 (or so) with the advent of the exterior gateway protocol and gateways that connected BITNET, Usenet, ARPAnet and CSNET, or certainly by 1983 with U of Wisconsin's name server.

I miss my old C-64. Eight bit computing was so simple. Want some data, LDA it from its register! Want to write something? STA it wherever you want! Asking the OS for resources is for WUSSIES! Damn it, if I want background processing, I'll write a raster interrupt routine to do it.

Life was easier when you only had a choice of 4 of 16 colors, and then only a 320x200 bitmap to put those colors on.

The C64 was *the* hacker box back in the day. You could do pretty much anything with anything without fear of corrupting the system (ROM has its advantages), and the capabilities of the system were just unreal for an 8-bit of its day (remember, it was originally supposed to be an arcade game platform). I never got to use Qlink (mom was a hardass about getting a modem) but I do remember some of the games I played -- I still wish I had a recording of the credits music from the C64 version of Arkanoid II. Abso

Mapping graphics to a 2-bit bitmap that is made out of 8-byte blocks, so after every 4 pixels you need to jump over 7 bytes to draw a straight horizontal line, with 2 global colors + 2 colors that are chosen for that particular block... I never got to the point where I could say that was "easy".:-(

You're right... those were the days! Sorry, I didn't say it was rational, did I?

And this looks like it's actually an appropriate time to ask. I've heard that the Tandy "PC-LINK" service was also a predecessor of AOL. Anyone with some real knowledge want to enlighten me on the connection (if any) between Quantum Link and PC-LINK?

The social makeup of the online community 20 years ago was so much different than it is now. Even those of us who are left are 20 years older and different from whom we were then. It's a time and a 'place' that will never again be repeated, although seeing the UI again has sparked some very distant and pleasant memories.

Thanks for bringing it back, and it was interesting to read in the thread what hardware the service originally ran on, I had always wondered. If there are any more details I'd like to know. (how many dial in lines, how were they physically situated...any PHOTOS of the hardware?)

FOr those of you who are wondering about the AOL connection - Quantumlink was run by Quantum Computer Services in Vienna, Virginia. They later started a service for PC and Mac users called America Online, and that later became their entire business and business name. As mentioned earlier, they shut down Qlink and encouraged migration to AOL, and that was the end of that.

This coincided with the general decline of C=64s and 128s in lieu of newer machines. But yes it would have been nice to have Amiga support for it, because for the next 5 or 6 years I owned probably every single model of Amiga ever made at one time or another.

Before getting a shell account with a UUCP newsfeed in '91 or so, I was visiting local multi-line BBSs. (MajorBBS with lots of lines - 16 to 32 lines) and that's where I met pretty much everyone I knew at the time. Local boards are great, because you get to meet everyone eventually at local gatherings. Oh well, that's all gone too. Back to IRC where anyone you don't know is either a pedophile or a cop.:)

1) The Commodore community has always wanted the service back. It was more than a service, it was a community.
2) The exercise was worth more than years of classes in software development and error/runtime diagnosis. In my current vocation, I am often relied on to diagnose issues that are surprisingly like trying to decipher a communication between two parties I have little knowledge of.
3) It was a nice brain (pun not intended, for those who know who this is) exercise, trying to carry on a conversation with a piece of software when you only know one half of the verbs and nouns. At work, I do things in an insulated world of HTTP, SOAP, XML, etc., and one has to have a challenge to keep the brain cells working well.
4) It was there. So be it.
5) I wanted to be on/. (well, not really, but that's what everyone may think...)
Jim

It's not a troll...it's discussion bait... why? I guess for the sense of achievement, and want to immerse oneself in an exclusive community where people who pursue the obscure, like you, have something in common...to share an smaller internet not full of corporate websites & casual users, who feel no excitement from the internet, or the wonder of international broadcasting, or space exploration, because they're so acclimatized to it...it's rewarding to do hard things with your computer. That's wh

To a certain extent, I mourn the loss of the olden days. No, I don't think that the C64, Atari, TI, Amiga, $FAV_OLD_COMPUTER, should dominate the market. However, I do remember a time when EVERY COMPUTER MADE came with a dialect of BASIC and encouraged users to learn to program. (BASIC is arguably not the best language to learn programming, but I will not argue that now.)(PS: Let's not forget how printer manuals showed you how to program the printer. Okay, potentially useless in the face of a graphics p

About the closest you get in Windows these days is IE which obviously can be scripted with HTML and Javascript. Python would be pretty good as it's both easy to learn and pretty powerful and I've seen it on most Windows machines but I've never checked to see if Windows installed it.

PC-link/AppleLink and the similar thing for Amiga developers were, I believe, different from QLink/AOL - BBS/ASCII oriented. QLink/AOL were server/client. However, I don't know PC-Link/AppleLink that well.

You mean you never knew? AppleLink Personal Edition (nee AOL) and PC-Link ran on many of the same servers as Q-Link, and used the same protocol. In fact, those gen2-2 clients shared far more with gen-1 than they did with the current Windows and Mac AOL clients.AppleLink -was- AOL; the name was changed when Apple dropped out as a partner, two months after launch. PC-Link was run as a separate service, but eventually we realized the benefit of getting a "critical mass", and we'd already bridged the platfor